Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.
Secrecy has long surrounded the UNLV Research Foundation and its Institute for Security Studies. Among the questions the Sun has been trying to answer for months is the pedigree of its research staff.
What should be an easy assessment has proven anything but.
The foundation's marching orders are to turn research into commercial applications and to develop a technology park to incubate new businesses. But while the foundation has lined up various grants, it has largely missed the mark on its main goals. Even though the foundation employs researchers, most of its contracts have been subawarded to UNLV, other universities or private companies.
The foundation did not appear to have the expertise to do the work itself, and many employees appeared to be interconnected, having worked together in previous companies.
The Sun filed a public information request May 26 asking for details about the Research Foundation, including its employees. We were looking for basic biographical information: name, salary, job description, academic background and employment background.
After several conversations and e-mails with then-Public Affairs Director Hilarie Grey to clarify the request, I met with several key executives June 13. But instead of receiving the documents I had sought, I was asked to clarify the request.
It took another month, and several more meetings and phone calls, to get most of the questions answered. But UNLV officials seemed to be dodging one of my basic requests: information about the educational and employment background of its employees.
It's a personnel issue, university employees explained. We're going to get it for you but we have to have our employees sign a waiver.
The Sun filed a fourth public information request July 31, repeating the request for the resumes of all research employees, including the 18 in research or academic positions. Nearly a month later, I was sent a packet of job descriptions for the Research Foundation staff, and a note that all staff met the minimum qualifications - typically, a bachelor's degree and five years of experience.
The researchers on staff - principally professional engineers or computer scientists - were making upward of six-figures, as much or more than their counterparts at UNLV who were required to have doctorates. I asked the foundation's pubic relations office which degrees were held by those researchers, what schools they attended and where they previously had worked. Most UNLV professors post this information on the Web or in their class syllabus, but because UNLV didn't seem to understand my simple request, I even dashed off a miniresume with my own background.
I also said I wanted Mark Rudin, interim vice president of Research and Graduate Studies, to explain why a university research institute would only require its researchers to hold bachelor's degrees.
Rudin, who steps down in January to run the research division at Boise State University, wrote back that the positions were professional in nature and thus required a "blend of education and experience."
Still, UNLV officials refused to detail what that experience was because their employees refused to sign waivers, citing fear of how the Sun would use the information. Their academic and professional backgrounds were, Rudin and others said, part of their confidential personnel file.
It turns out that in seeking to learn staff members' backgrounds, I've been in good company.
Verifying credentials has been an issue for the Board of Regents since a Community College of Southern Nevada professor was found to have fraudulently claimed a doctorate degree in 2002.
Executive Vice Chancellor Dan Klaich is now asking regents to make the educational and employment background of all employees part of the public record.
"There is no reason that we shouldn't tell the whole world who makes up our faculty and staff," said Klaich, who was unaware of the Sun's red-tape battle with UNLV. "We should be proud of it," he said of the staff's backgrounds.
New UNLV President David Ashley agreed, indicating that he would expect professional researchers to either hold doctorates in their field or, in rare cases, the equivalent experience.
The regents will take up the issue on Thursday and, if they agree, the handbook revision will be voted on in December.
Which means the Sun can expect those resumes sometime in January.
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